Petaluma dive bars live on in entertaining memoir

How did five of Petaluma’s oldest and most colorful dive bars end up with cameos in a nonfiction travel book by a British photographer-turned writer?

The answer is as strange and funny as the book itself.

First published in 2016, “Not Tonight Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America,” follows George Mahood – fresh out of college in 2000 – during an eight-month, 10,000-mile road trip across the United States.

“I wanted to see what’s real in the middle of your country,” he explained, speaking on a Zoom call from Devon, in the south of England, where he lives with his wife Rachel and their three children.

The American journey Mahood ended up taking brought him, at one point, to Petaluma, where his Christmas holiday stay-over is described halfway through the book, told in four entertaining chapters crammed with local references and landmarks that Petalumans are certain to pick up on and appreciate.

Mahood’s story begins with Josephine.

The original plan for Mahood and his friend Mark was simple enough.

“We would buy a cheap second-hand car and set off,” he explained. “We wanted to explore the parts of America no buses, trains or tour groups stopped at. We wanted to visit the America you don’t see in sitcoms.”

Things went awry from the beginning when Mahood was forced to fly over by himself, because Mark was having problems obtaining a visa. While waiting for Mark to sort it all out, Mahood took a Greyhound bus to Baltimore on a whim, arriving after dark. Unable to find a hotel vacancy, Mahood spent the night at a “fairly grim” bus station.

It did, however, have one of the most amazing inventions I had ever seen. Each chair had a small, coin-operated television attached to the arm. For 25c you could watch 10 minutes of a grainy black and white TV with barely audible sound… America was almost too clever for its own good. Why was nobody else in awe of these chairs like I was?

When Mark finally arrived in America, the pair went shopping for a car, walking 30 miles to a remote location in Upstate New York, where they paid $850 for a 1989 Dodge Caravan minivan.

“We didn’t even start the engine first — we weren’t going to walk back,” Mahood said. “People couldn’t believe we could be so stupid.”

The transmission went out immediately.

“Josephine,” as they dubbed the vehicle, turned out to be a major lemon, haunting and threatening the adventurers’ lives the entire trip. Constantly consuming what little money they have, Josephine lurched from one state to the next as the travelers took short-term, low-paying jobs to stay afloat. Both of them being musicians, they had imagined themselves busking for dollars. That fantasy soon became a less glamorous reality: delivering pizza in the worst vehicle in America.

Eventually, the two reached Petaluma, where Mahood had relatives whose chicken ranch was available for housesitting while the owners visited the UK.

On one of their nights in town, they drove into downtown Petaluma for a bar crawl.

First up was Andresen’s. Stepping through its front doors was like walking into a John Wayne film. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling in stuffed animals … One particular item on the wall got my attention more than most … a large deer head with a bobcat sprawled lavishly across its antlers, as though it was just having a bit of chill-out time.

Next, they visited Gale’s Central Club, followed by the Hideaway. All three bars are still in business, though currently closed due to the pandemic. The pair finished up with Kodiak Jack’s and The Bottom Line, both of which have closed. For those nostalgic locals who still miss Kodiak Jack’s, the chapter does describe the bar’s legendary mechanical bull.

We stood and watched others thrashing around for a few minutes, but even the thought of riding it was making me feel queasy.

For two weeks, Mahood and his friend subsisted on eggs, the one thing the Petaluma ranch provided plenty of. For Christmas they splurged on a turkey.

Two turkeys, actually.

The sign said two-for-one, so they grabbed a second, failing to notice that it was a different brand.

At the time of the trip, Mahood admits, he had no strong expectation of becoming a writer, only a faint desire to tell stories. The only problem?

“I didn’t think I had a story to tell,” he admitted.

Still, he did take notes – suggesting he had at least an inkling of someday writing about the trip. Those notes languished in a drawer for a decade, during which Mahood worked as a wedding photographer. That buried itch to write persisted, and eventually, Mahood found that the key to writing, for him anyway, is to engineer experiences that might yield a memorable story.

In the first book, “Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain,” published in 2013, Mahood and a friend set themselves the goal of cycling 1,000 miles from the bottom of England to the top of Scotland in three weeks. They did so with no money, clothes, bikes or food. Dressed only in Union Jack boxer shorts, they would be dependent on the kindness of strangers.

They made it in 19 days.

In 2015, recovering from surgery for a spinal cord tumor, Mahood decided not to just get well but to qualify for an Ironman triathlon. He couldn’t swim very well, had never ridden a road bike, and had not run more than a 10k in 18 months. The result was “Operation Ironman: One Man’s Four Month Journey from Hospital Bed to Ironman Triathlon.” Even the years spent shooting an estimated 250 weddings yielded a book, “How Not To Get Married: Confessions of a Wedding Photographer.”

After publishing four such books, Mahood looked back at his Josephine notes and realized there was a book there. After all, his published works followed a similar trajectory – immerse yourself in a difficult-to-impossible situation and just record what happens.

That’s how “Not Tonight Josephine” – a demonstration of youthful naivete, bad luck and good-natured perseverance – would become Mahood’s fifth book. It would soon be followed by two more works. In total, Mahood has published seven books in as many years.

Admitting that his writing pace has slowed due to COVID-19 and the demands of homeschooling his children, Mahood confirms that new projects are underway.

He says he will never forget his remarkable journey across the U.S.

I arrived in America as a bedraggled looking student-type, but I would be leaving as a man. Actually, that’s not true. I was far more bedraggled-looking and significantly worse off financially than when I arrived.

[“Not Tonight Josephine,” along with Mahood’s other books, is available on Amazon or through the author’s website (which he describes as ”hastily built and fairly rubbish,“ at GeorgeMahood.com]